#so if thats the case why dont we just meet up in an airbnb every few weeks instead of making me fall in love with u and ur fam

[smireyac]

fuck this year man u dont even get cute emojis in the title this time

so lemme just start by saying fuck 2020 

now that we’re on the same page, lets get into it

so i dont have to explain all the reasons why this year sucked bc u just need to google 2020 and there will be a million reasons why it was TOTAL FUCKING GARBAGE...... usually when so many people collectively say a year sucked ass, i can be like “oh it wasnt *all* bad for me, personally” haha not this year!!! 

its super fucking depressing to look at how hopeful and positive i was about 2020 a year ago..... ofc there was no way for me to have known it would all go to shit but i still really appreciate the tone i had set... reading over the previous reflections and seeing how harsh and negative i was @ myself made the softness of last years post super refreshing.... 

now i said i dont *have* to explain all the ways 2020 was shitty, but i am gonna explain the biggest reason this year was shitty for me, personally..... it might seem really small in comparison to the ways 2020 was shitty as a whole on like a global scale? but really the biggest reason 2020 sucked ass was i didnt get to really hang out with any of my friends in real life for 9 out of the 12 months of the year.... and really it was like the first week of march that shit hit the fan so like really it was only 2 months that we got to see each other....... if u rmbr p much every previous retrospective post ive made, there was a big emphasis on friends..... ive come to realize that im actually a very *extra*verted person??? despite my overall shyness and homebody attitude, i would always choose to hang out with people over being alone so stay-at-home orders FUCKING SUCKED??? when we all thought it would be over in a couple weeks, maybe a month it was fine?? hey its a good time to draw or catch up on that reading and/or writing i said i was gonna do maybe even start learning to drive?? it’ll be no big deal THEN it wasn’t over in a month and it wasnt gonna BE over anytime soon and no one important was doing anything about it and its an election year and black lives have always mattered and yet everything is so uncertain and

[inhale]

[exhale]

this year was..... a lot...... too much in fact

in 2018, i had said that i watched vox’s video on the year in 5 mins and cried... if i watched this year in five minutes, i dont think i would be able to breathe...... 

SO instead of making myself CRY..... lets try to think about any GOOD things that happened and think about what we can do to make 2021 good for ourselves:

GOOD THINGS THAT HAPPENED:

-i *didn’t* lose my job!! sad that so many others cannot say the same but im trying to make myself feel *better* not WORSE so i got to keep my job and i actually work more hours than before so!!

-i actually *did* learn to drive this year!!!! and im pretty good at it??? for someone that just started this year anyway?? i probably *would* have my DRIVER’S LICENSE right now if it weren’t for a surge in cases in a certain STATE that i happen to live in......... but w/e its fine i get more time to practice and im ~~**DEFINITELY**~~ going pass my test and get my license ~whenever it is that i can reschedule my dmv appt~

lmfao its so funny that last year, i was absolutely *dreading* learning to drive but i so fucking get why everyone was like ‘you need to learn how to drive’ i legit love it so much???? ive always been a car person but that was like purely for the aesthetic but now that i can drive im just....... WOOOW this really is what freedom feels like.... like ik that public transportation is amazing and i will always champion it but nothing beats being purely in control of your destination.... i also wanted to buy myself a car for my birthday even tho i couldnt really drive yet but then sien had to fix smthg on her car and it was EXPENSIVE AF and my mom was like “u dont need to buy a car yet” so i put the brakes [haha] on that... but soon... once i get my license,,, then i will have u my love................. so with that being “my most serious goal of 2020″ im glad i did it

-i was one of lucky ones and got unemployment when i couldn’t work so i have a lot of money saved in the bank??? pls no one steal my identity i wanna use that money to buy myself a car and/or for when we move out 🤞🤞 we’ll just have to wait and seeeeee....................

-i had mentioned playing dnd last year too and thats been going STRONG as hell thank goodness....... we couldnt keep playing in person but when we moved it to online, not only did we actually get to hang out a lot more, we made more friends??? introduced new people to the group?? its so good and in fact probably the only thing that kept me even a little bit sane this year...... 

-this is more of an honorable mention than an accomplishment but im this 🤏close to catching up with critical role and thats partially thanks to the pandemic lmao sooooo ??? 

aaaaaaand thats p much it lol i didnt really accomplish any of my other goals bc reasons................. but!!! as cliche as it sounds, with a light at the end of the tunnel, im confident that i can turn that all around this year.... so if 2016 was the year of change, 2017 was the year of getting used to shit, 2018 was the year of getting *too* used to shit and 2019 ended up being the year of friends, 2020 was the year of absolute shit and it doesn’t fucking count....... i learned a lot this year, biggest lesson of all is that life is short and if i were to have died at any point last year, what the fuck would i have to show for it??? so usually i end up giving a theme or name to a year after its done but this time im determined to make 2021 into what i want it to be SO i am declaring this year, the year of our lord 2021, the year of new experiences!!!! what the fuck does that mean you ask? well ill tell you!!! im gonna try new things this year!! make a very pointed effort to do things outside my comfort zone?? and for my goals this year, im going back to my old way of making a huge list of stuff u wanna do and seeing how much i can actuallly accomplish!! now i said theres a light but we really dont know when all this shit will end and life will go “bAcK tO nOrMaL” so whos to say ill get to accomplish any of it? at the same time, there are plenty of stuff on the list that i can do within the pandemic set parameters so!! lets see this list!!

2021 GOALS:

[check boxes bc there is no plain box emoji lmao]

☑️ read new books!! i’ll keep last years goal bc i didnt meet it and i have good reads now which tells me i just need to read 1.5 books a month to reach that goal!! huzzah!

☑️ watch new shows and new movies b4 u end up watching shit you’ve already seen a million times... i bought an old planner for 2020 instead of 2021 by accident but i hope it will help keep track of the movies/shows along with the books too!

☑️ listen to new music!! this years spotify wrapped was garbo it only had like 3 albums and a bunch of other shit i always listen to so i gotta fix that lmfao

☑️ write new stories!! i am comforted by the shit ive been writing for the past like 7 years but if my screenplay class taught me anything its that there are a lot of stories to tell and i got so many ideas floating around in this noggin!! instead of an arbitrary word count, why dont i say write idk 3 new stories, start to finish, in whatever medium idc screenplay, short story, comic, twine WHATEVER!! do it!

☑️ eat new food!! lmao this one seems the most silly to me but ive never had indian food, ive never had [not really anyway] korean food, i want to find new restaurants and eat new food!!! yum!

☑️ go on a road trip!!

☑️ visit some place ive never been before!!

☑️ go on a hike??

☑️ go to mexico again

☑️ ride a scary rollercoaster you previously wouldnt have

☑️ go to a club

☑️ get silly drunk fr 

☑️ FUCK IT go on dates!! self date friend dates sister date cousin dates R- Romantic... dates ??? FUCK IT!!! YEAH!! DATE ALL UP IN THIS BITCH!!

☑️ learn to use blender

☑️ animate something 

☑️ make a big painting

☑️ cosplay ???? AHH

☑️ learn to roller skate lmao u bought the skates and were so excited for them!! 

☑️ go somewhere SUPER DARK and go see some real stars!!!! 

☑️ and to top it all off, throw the airbnb house party that we’ve been talking about for MONTHS lmao 

hmmmm,, i think thats a good enough list for now ?? another thing i wanted to accomplish.... that im scared to speak into existence bc then i cant back out of doing it...........and it doesnt align with the whole “new” spirit of 2021 but.......... i want to like start making apartments for rent????? like i want to have something of it to show by, if not the 8th anniversary then by the end of the year HHUFF THERE I SAID IT......... no turning back now.......... 

alright its almost midnight on.... whats this? its already jan. 1st??? lmao yeah fuck it i didnt keep up with anything i normally did this year who cares i made up the rules i can break them too lol  

so yeah 

we’ll see what this year brings us,,,,

hoo boy

#omg i talk #happy new year

[grugq]

Some very amusing tale of a smallish retail business. The main points on the opsec are pretty terrible actually. Using burners is very poor form for the modern day and age.

I want to point out a few things from this crew which are security related:

Never get in somebody’s car. No meeting in bars—you have to be in their apartment. No meeting in parties. No handoffs on the street. A cop might be checking you out. Dress professionally and in character. No marijuana anything on your shirt. No cute little shorts.” She points to one girl who’s wearing a dress that leaves most of her breasts exposed. “This is too low.” The girl, flustered, pulls up her dress over her chest. “We’re selling weed, going to men’s apartments. Boobs out for customers—no.”

I'm not sure why she insists on apartments. Thats risky for video surveillance. She seem to want the couriers to dress attractively enough that they don't get searched, but not so attractively they are memorable? Or at risk? I'm not entirely clear on that one.

The character we’re going for isn’t that of a pot dealer. It’s the student, the professional, the regular girl. Play the part—cool, calm, and collected. If a cop in the subway asks to see what’s in your makeup bag, just be cool, calm, and collected.”

Not a bad cover. There is huge security issue where she allows an outsider to not only meet her entire organisation to to write them all up for GQ. That is insane.

Never give the customer your real name or number. Follow your intuition. If you’re feeling unsafe, go into a bodega. “You’re working for an illegal business,” Honey reminds them. “It’s only a little illegal, but don’t tell your friends.”

This lady is no AlpraKing and these guidelines are nothing like his. I wouldn't trust her to operate this sort of organisation. She isn't being truthful about the risks, and she isn't giving them great security guidelines. Plus, again, inviting a reporter from a high profile to meet the entire organisation is just crazy.

Honey returns to the subject of what to do if stopped by the police. A runner’s main weapon is her smile, her ability to talk to the cops: “Say, ‘I love the NYPD! You guys are the best,’ ” Honey says, fluttering her eyelashes and making a heart sign with her hands. “The number one thing cops look for is lack of eye contact.” Honey urges all the runners to memorize her phone number, promising, “If you get in trouble, we’ll get you out in two hours.”

This is at least fairly useful. How to use apparent cover (pretty girl) to manipulate the law enforcement officers. Also knowing who to call to come get bailed out seems definitely useful.

She fields a question: “And if they ask you to open the box?” “Say you don’t have the code.”

This does not sound like a very plausible or reliable way to deflect attention. I'd think that an officer would just get interested and start with follow up questions that the courier may not have answers too.

One of the Angels suggests using a tote bag instead of a backpack to carry the box. She generally uses a WNYC tote bag, which is given out to donors to the public-radio station.

Nice cover, too bad that police are now going to be checking for young pretty girls with tote bags. Still, the concept of using good cover is solid.

Honey tells the girls to get a work phone from MetroPCS, which costs $100. When buying it, they should pay in cash and have a name in mind to put down on the form, in case the police check. “I like to use the names of girls who were my enemies growing up,” Honey says.

Tells couriers to get a burner phone. This is 2017, not 2003. Burners are dead as dead can be for drug dealer tech. Also, using the names of real people that are linked to you is a bad idea. Better to get real names of random people and create a full cover identity.

At the end of the meeting, I ask the girls for their names and phone numbers and they cheerfully oblige, writing them in my notebook. But then Honey calls out, “Give him your burner numbers. Don’t give him your real names.” An Angel comes up and takes my notebook and rips off the sheet with the numbers. They write again, with a new set of names; I’m using fake names in this story as well.

These girls are not very street smart, I think would be the polite way to put it.

next week, I walk over to the drug den again. I press C1, which has a black mark next to it made with a Magic Marker: one long and two short presses of the button. The door buzzes in response. Upstairs, I meet Charley, one of the five dispatchers on duty. She has been in the drug den since 11:30 a.m., and she’ll stay until midnight—a double shift.

I hope that is not the real code to get let in.

The apartment has a bedroom in which the supplies are kept, a bathroom, and a living room with an open kitchen. It’s centrally located for a business that serves both Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the neighbors don’t mind all the traffic—most of the other units are Airbnb rentals. Every six months, Honey changes to a new location.

Using a roaming safehouse that is situated in a block of AirBnB units where no one pays attention to anyone else's coming or going is a good technique.

The Green Angels average around 150 orders a day, which is about a fourth of what the busiest services handle.

Kinda small time, but still large enough that the police would be interested in the bust.

When a customer texts, it goes to one of the cell phones on the table in the living room. There’s a hierarchy: The phones with the pink covers are the lowest; they contain the numbers of the flakes, cheapskates, or people who live in Bed-Stuy. The purple phones contain the good, solid customers. Blue is for the VIPs. There are over a thousand customers on Honey’s master list.

that is not a good list to be on. o.O

To place an order, a customer is supposed to text “Can we hang out?” and a runner is sent to his apartment. No calling, no other codes or requests. Delivery is guaranteed within an hour and a half. If the customer isn’t home, he gets a strike. Three strikes and he’s 86’d. If he yells at the runner, he’s 86’d immediately.

That is actually a pretty good system. The couriers carry a large supply with them so they dont need to take the order beforhand. They can fulfill it onsite with the customer, allowing for just a simple signal to indivate that they want a transation. This is pretty safe.

To be honest, the real safety of these girls their white skin, socio economic status and good looks. Definitely safer to be a pretty young white girl slanging dope than a young black male.

The Angels work only by referral. The customers should refer people they really know and trust, not strangers, and no one they’ve met in a bar. If you refer someone who becomes a problem, Charley says, you lose your membership

The allow their customers to do the vetting, which is a bit difficult. Transitive trust, isn't. Any organisation needs growth if it wants to keep operationing because there is bound to be churn from the natural attrition of their existing clientele.

A text comes in asking for Charley by name. That’s a no-no. You’re not allowed to request a specific Angel. Another runner texts saying a customer is late and she’s been kept waiting. In such cases, Charley says, “We nicely scold them.”

Not sure what this particular protection is against, but it seems to be more about the security of the girls than the security of the operation.

Throughout the day, the texts ebb and flow. Lunchtime is busy, and then the afternoon is slack. Then it gets really busy between 5:30 and 8:30, as people come home from work. On the weekends, it’s busy between noon and 6 p.m. Bad weather is good for business; on a beautiful day, someone is not going to sit around at home waiting for a weed delivery.

I wonder if this information could be used to detect potential drug operations. They have a pattern of operation which doesn't really match up with a pattern for meeting with pretty girls. It doesn't fit with their cover that someone want to meet with them in the middle of the day, rather than later at night. Or maybe I'm wrong. It does seem like it would be a good heutristic to detect a drug dealer. Hundreds of texts messages a day at predictable hours to the same few numbers, all saying "can we hang out?"

A customer has moved, and the runner doesn’t know his new address.

lol, the types ot real problems that real operations face all the time.

Then Marie gets a text from a new number. She shows it to me, saying she won’t respond to an unknown number. She advises the sender, “Please have whoever recommended you send me a text.”

On the one hand, not sending illegal substances to an unknown customer is good security. On the other hand, they're kinda sloppy about their OPSEC to interact so blatantly.

She stares in horror at a text: “I got two sativas and an indica if you want one.” It’s obviously misdirected, meant for some lucky friend of the texter. “That’s a strike. What a dumb-ass!” She calls a customer. “Can you open the door, please? I’ve been waiting ten minutes. Next time, can you be a little closer to the phone?” Then, after she hangs up, “That’s a strike, absolutely.”

How they are still in business is beyond me. I suspect that the DEA simply doesnt care. or the NYPD.

She tells me I’ll have to change everyone’s name, and I can’t say too much about her wholesalers, “or they’ll kill me.” She’s dealt with multiple death threats throughout her career. The wholesalers call her if she’s late on payments and say, “I’ll come to your parents’ house and shoot them.” Honey gives it back to them. “I say, ‘I’ll call the feds and have you shipped back to China. I’m waiting for you. I’m gonna fucking blow your head up, and then I’ll blow your mother’s head up.’ ” People are scared of a crazy girl, she notes.

Guess it is chinese providers. Given how lax the security is for this outfit, those guys should drop them and find another retailer.

she’s paying more than $3,000 per pound for good indoor-grown hydroponic weed. Selling it off an eighth of an ounce at a time, she can mark it up 100 percent. Honey’s business is always on credit. She buys $300,000 worth and pays it back when the weed sells. Sometimes it doesn’t move, especially when the quality is poor. The pot she sees on her buying trips may not be what actually arrives. Other times, if it’s coming over by truck, it could get cooked in the hot trailer on its way across the country; by the time she sees it, it’s like hay. The growers will try their luck sending a shipment that’s half bad “because they figure in New York, anything moves.”

The supply side guys seem to be taking a huge risk.

These days, most of Honey’s weed comes via FedEx. If she ships the stuff herself, it costs her $500 per pound; with FedEx, the cost comes to about $200 per pound, even though she’s more likely to lose a box or two that way. The FedEx employees steal more packages than the post-office workers. “A lot of them took the jobs because they know about it.” If you go to a FedEx parking lot, she says, you’ll notice that the drivers come to work in sports cars.

much lol.

There are FedEx inspectors who try to intercept the drugs. They will send a control box to the address and then bust in to arrest the recipient. Honey has a device that she waves over and all around the FedEx box, which will emit a signal if it detects a tracking device or transponder.

A controlled delivery would lead to an immediate arrest. What good would having that frequency detector do? It would be relevant after the arrest is made. Or it wouldn't matter because she'd find the tracker when she opened and repackaged the product. It makes no sense.

At the hospital, after the delivery—the baby girl was eight pounds six ounces—Honey heard the nurses arguing outside her room. “It’s only weed!” one said. They came in and took the baby away and put her in the NICU, where she was the biggest child in a room full of preemies. Child Protective Services told Honey that a doctor had reported her after they tested her urine; her THC levels were the highest they had come across in the hospital that year.

OPSEC fail.

#drug war #opsec